The Year of Uncertainty…

There’s a site that is promoting a writing challenge that Mel’s been trying to take part in at the end of this odd little year of ours. It can be found at http://www.reverb10.com/ and while I haven’t been taking part, I have been reading the topics, or “prompts”, of inspiration.

Described in their own words…

“Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead.”

…it pushes you to do what you are probably doing subconsciously anyways at the end of the year: stop, breath and reflect. The first “prompt” they put up was a doozy, asking you to sum up your last year with one solitary word. It seems like a conventional “end of the year” request, but honestly, when I took time to stop and think about it, it’s damn hard to come up with something genuine that fits.

After a lot of thought, all of these words ricocheting in my head, the one that kept rising to the top was the word “uncertainty”.

“uncertainty”

At face value it seems like a downer of a word. But, in reality, it actually was a good year all told. Yes there was some sorrow, but for the most part, a lot of good things happened. REALLY good things. So why choose that word out of all the others? Well, the thing is, all of it, the good and the bad, all occurred in ways we never expected.

Plans got unplugged, aspirations got diverted, old goals got squashed and new ones were created. All of these occurred by issues WAY out of our control. Typically the big things we plan for the year play out somehow. But this year? Situations we couldn’t have hoped to see coming kept occurring, sometimes at the last minute, rerouting our lives entirely. I’m not a huge subscriber to the concept of fate but, it certainly seemed like something was pushing us in a different direction.

I’ve never really had a year like this one. A year where, after the third snafu in a row, I felt like all I could do was just float and let this grand river we call life take me where ever it needed to. We definitely relinquished a good amount of control that we’ve become accustomed to and I think it taught us a lot.

That life is meant to be unpredictable. That sometimes you just have take your hand off the wheel, accept what happens and live through it. Yeah it can end up horrible, but, in most cases, it can open your eyes to something you’ve never known or noticed before. It could be the foundation of a potential lesson, but it also could be the start of an incredible adventure!

So yeah, as scary as the word can be. I think we all could use a little unbridled “uncertainty” in our lives once an a while. Control will always be comforting, but comfort isn’t always living.